Wedged
by TheNextFolchart
Summary: Everyone is looking. And Neville doesn't really blame them. He'd have been looking, too, if he saw a boy with half his body stuck inside a barrier at the train station. /Written for numerous challenges and competitions on HPFC


_[Cinema Competition: There's Something About Mary - write about an embarrassing incident.]_

_[Fanfiction Categories Competition: ! - write about someone stuck in the middle.]_

* * *

_Please don't let anybody be looking, please don't let anybody be looking, _please _don't let anybody be looking . . . _

But it's no use. Everyone is looking. Wizards, Muggles, children, adults, _everyone_.

And Neville doesn't really blame them. He'd have been looking, too, if he saw a boy with half his body stuck inside a barrier at the train station.

"Help?" he says, trying to squirm, but it's no use, he's completely trapped. He can't move one way or the other, and he doesn't know how this happened but it sort of hurts and he can't breathe very well and he's beginning to panic. On the wall, mounted next to the 'Platform 9 3/4' sign, he can see the giant clock ticking down the minutes, and he realizes he doesn't have much time left before the train leaves without him. He squirms harder. Nothing happens. "Help?" he says again.

"Is that _Neville_?"

"Where?"

"Over there! Oi! Neville!"

Neville waves with his one free arm. "Hullo," he says as Fred and George Weasley approach him. "How're you lot, then?"

Fred leans against his trolly cart and grins. "We're fine," he says, looking Neville up and down. "Our Christmas holiday was so lovely that _half _of me wants to stay behind, actually."

"Oh, yes," George adds. "We're a bit _torn_, really, about whether we want to go back to finish our seventh year -"

" - because we're still _stuck _on making our joke shop a success."

"Oh, go on, make jokes," Neville says glumly.

"Come on, mate, we're only teasing."

"What happened here?" George asks, pointing at the barrier. "How did you get, er . . . wedged in there?"

"I dunno." Neville looks down at himself. He can see his torso, but right around his stomach his body disappears into the brick wall. "I was running at the barrier, same as always, but when I was half-through it turned solid. So here I am. Stuck in the middle." He tries to shrug.

George furrows his brow. "Maybe it's enchanted to only stay open for a certain window, and you tried to come through just as it was closing?" he suggests.

Fred presses his hand against the barrier. It falls through easily. "That's not it," he says. "Someone is playing a prank on you, Nev."

Neville's face turns bright red. "If it's one of you two, I swear to Merlin - "

George places a hand over his heart. "I'm offended, Neville. We would never play such a cruel joke."

"Yes, you would."

"Not on a Gryffindor," Fred amends.

Neville sighs. According to the clock, he only has twelve minutes left. "Can you help me out?" he asks.

"I'm not sure," George says, looking at his brother. "We wouldn't want to miss the train ourselves."

"Oh, come now, George, we can't just leave a fellow student wedged inside a wall like this!" Fred is fishing in his pockets for his wand. "How'll we do it, then?" he asks. "I was thinking _reducto_."

"No!" Neville's eyes are popping out of his face. "You might miss!"

George scoffs. "Miss? _Us?"_

"You may want to rethink insulting us," adds Fred, "seeing as we're the only ones willing to help you."

"I didn't mean - I just don't want my legs to end up cut off."

"We wouldn't cut your legs off!"

"Yeah, _reducto_'s a blasting curse, not a cutting one. Your legs would be in smithereens."

"I think he's thinking of _diffindo_, George. That's the one used for severing."

"I s'pose if worst comes to worst, we could always use that one to sever his body from the barrier. He'd need a Healer straight away or he'd die, but it's still a viable option."

"No severing charms," interrupts Neville. "Can't you just pull me out?"

The twins exchange a glance. "We could try it," Fred says, stowing his wand and gripping onto Neville's arm. He tugs, but Neville is stuck fast, and nothing happens.

"_Accio _Neville," tries George, but the Summoning charm isn't strong enough, either, and Neville has begun to sweat, they only have nine minutes to make the train and it turns out it's awfully warm inside brick walls.

"What if we transfigure the barrier?" George asks. "Make it into something less solid."

"Like water!" Fred says. "Brilliant! Stylish, yet simple. We learned that charm back in first year, didn't we?"

George nods. "Just goes to show how useless the subsequent six have been."

Neville furrows his brow. "You turned things to water in your first year?"

George nods. "Didn't you?"

Neville shakes his head. "We still haven't learned that one."

"Well, George and I have always been more advanced than our peers," Fred says, pulling out his wand again.

"I'm sure McGonagall taught it to you," George says. "It's simple. Just one word."

But that doesn't sound quite right, and as the twins raise their wands, Neville realizes which charm they're talking about. "No," he starts to say, but -

"_AGUAMENTI!_"

A jet of water douses Neville's face. "You _prats_," he sputters, and it's the first time he's used language that foul in his life. "That's not a Transfiguration charm! That's just the charm to produce _water!_"

The twins exchange glances. "Prats, he called us, did you hear?" says George lightly.

Fred nods. "I did indeed, George. I don't think Mr. Longbottom wants our help, after all."

"Just as well," George says. "The train's about to leave, anyway. We wouldn't want to miss it."

Neville shakes his wet hair out of his face and squints up at the clock. _Three minutes left._ "Don't go!" he cries. "Please! I just - need - to - get - _out!_" He grunts as he tries to pull himself free, but he's completely wedged inside, and it's no use. "Why won't you _release me?_" he shouts at the barrier, and then suddenly he's figured it out. "Fred!" he cries after their receding bodies. "George!"

The twins stop and turn back to him.

"It's _relashio_," he yells. "The spell's _relashio_!"

The twins share a look.

"_Please!"_

It's George who finally raises his wand and says the incantation, and then Neville is pitching forward, as if the barrier has physically spit him out, and with a little squeal he picks himself up off the ground and hurtles for the train.

Fred and George climb aboard after him and settle into their own compartment. "Wonder who pranked him," George says, folding his hands behind his head and propping his feet up on the empty seat across from him.

Fred mimics the pose. "Someone extremely talented, no doubt."

"Talented and handsome."

"Talented, handsome, and about to make a fortune off Portable Wall Wedges." Fred throws a wink at his brother as he pulls open the window and pokes his wand outside. "_Accio _Wedge," he says, and a nearly transparent curtain hanging over the front of the King's Cross barrier unsticks itself and zooms into Fred's hand.

"Pity it had to be Neville," George says as the train begins to pull out of the station.

Fred shrugs and folds the curtain until it's small enough to fit in his rucksack. "Pity _relashio_ actually released him. We'll have to work out that bug next time we're in the shop."

"Can you imagine what we could do with this once it's all finished?" George says. "Hang it over the entrance to Slytherin's Common Room - "

"Hang it from our room at home when Mum's after us - "

"Throw it over Umbridge's bed when she's sleeping!"

"Or on Ron's seat in the Great Hall."

"Brilliant." George claps his brother on the back. "What would I ever do without you, Fred?"

Fred folds his hands behind his head again and watches a dripping-wet Neville begging some first-years to remind him of the incantation for the drying charm. "Life would be quite dull, my friend," he says. "Quite dull indeed.


End file.
